Dear Reader, we shall try to be clear. Magellan Adaptive Optics a.k.a. MagAO shall now be referred to as MagAO-Classic or MagAO-C. This is due to the introduction of MagAO-eXtreme or MagAO-X on the scene. We are here at the same time for 2 different runs:
MagAO-C 2019B Observing Run, and
MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking Run
Welcome.
I arrived today with Amali Vaz and Emily Mailhot. You may remember Amali from such hits as her Award-Winning Blog Post (the award). Emily and her counterpart Jared Carlson are the new Steward AO Observing Specialists and Emily is here to be trained on MagAO-C while Jared C. is observing at LBTI in Tucson.
We wish our Chilean colleagues all the best in their efforts to organize better living conditions in this beautiful country. I haven’t been here for about a year and a half and it is nice to be back. The trip went smoothly, due to the airport staff in TUS, DFW, SCL, and LSC as well as the LCO staff at El Pino who arranged smooth door-to-door transport. Things were quiet in SCL but planes were flying on time and taxis and traffic in La Serena were pretty typical.
How I was greeted in SCL. [Image description: Katie’s Starbucks coffee cup is in the foreground, and it says “Katy <3" in hand-written black Sharpie. Emily is out of focus in the background, and the mountains around Santiago are even more out of focus and even more in the background.]Jared getting a panorama of the sunset. [Image description: A back-lit scene of the orange sun setting in orange clouds with clouds and mountains on the distant horizon. Jared is seen in the foreground off to the side, in silhouette taking a picture with his phone.]
The MagAO-C 2019B Blog Rules:
There must be 1 MagAO-C post per day.
The post of the day must include a Classic song of the day.
The end.
Song of the day: This is a Classic (in fact, a MagAO-Classic) because it came out the day we left Tucson for the first full (non-commissioning) science run in 2014A, over 5 years ago. It’s also a Classic because my heart always sings Shakira when I’m in Latin America. Finally, as noted in the original blog post, it’s a Classic because it has an astronomical theme (which used to be a typical blog rule).
It’s Empire by Shakira (we should start writing the song names for those cases where YouTube takes down the video and we otherwise can’t tell what it is a few years from now).
Thanks to our many resourceful observers posting over the last several days, I have accumulated photos to share. This is an LCO lifestyle post.
Trays of fresh-squeezed juices are displayed at breakfast. [Image description: Trays on 2 tiers with 10–15 glasses full of varied colorful juices.]
Don Hector (head chef from last turno) stands proudly by his delicious pizzas. [Image description: A collage. Top: A man with a chef hat and a shirt embroidered with “Carnegie Institution for Science” smiles for the camera. In front of him on the serving table are 4 pizzas of different flavors. Bottom: A tray with my dinner of Chilean-Hawaiian pizza (avocado and pineapple), soup, and lemon water.]
Breakfast on Alycia’s last day. [Image description: A collage. Top: My breakfast of 2 fried eggs, oatmeal, and fresh strawberry juice. Bottom: Alycia and Jared are sitting in front of their breakfast trays. Alycia is talking to Jared and the photographer. Jared is smiling and is caught mid-blink. ]
A mostly wild but partly tame vizcacha hanging out by my car at the telescopes. [Image description: Collage of a vizcacha by making cute poses sitting up by a white sedan with a missing hubcap. The vizcacha’s head looks kind of like a rabbit while its tail looks kind of like a squirrel.]
This vizzy was wild when it started and became tame. That’s because we call them wild when we see them on the hillside, and tame when we see them on the clean room. [Image description: A vizcacha in profile on a masonry stone wall. Its tail is curled into a coil. The dorms are off in the distance, and the flattened mountain top for the GMT is in the background.]
This is where Patchy settled on the clean room, after being scared into seeking a safe space by me walking down the stairs. [Image description: A vizcacha sits on top of a stone wall below a tile roof. Its ears stick up and its tail curls.]
A glorious sunset with a silhouette of a vizzy. [Image description: A bright red sky is in silhouette with a scrubby bush, some other small plants, some rocks, and a vizcacha on a hillside.]
Song of the day, just cuz I like it:
[Song/Image description: Derniere Danse by Indila]
[Song/Image description: Cover of Derniere Danse by Hristina]
Update: Now that we are in the US, apparently the first version isn’t available here, so here is the other version:
I’m not sure what the sky looked like at sunset because I slept straight from dawn to dusk — I think I got 11 hours. Wow I was exhausted from the past week of coding and observing! I was kinda late to the telescope, I really mean to be there before sunset. Luckily our observer Alycia Weinberger is an old Clio pro. She logged in and got everything up and running — except it wasn’t working. The buttons on the gui were unresponsive. They tried killclio runclio twice. And about 5-10 minutes before I got up there (as I was hurriedly attiring myself in observing gear and then seeking a car) I was sent some urgent questions by Jared and Alycia wondering what else to try.
So I tear into the control room and take a look… and … Ok… it turns out…
It was the mouse.
For the past week the Clio observing station has been my work station, so to make myself comfortable I had switched the mouse buttons from right-handed to left-handed. So they were opt-clicking when they thought they were clicking. And they blamed it on Clio being unresponsive!
Um… so yeah. Sorry everyone. And let’s let Clio off the hook on this one. (And I guess that means I’m now solidly on a night schedule, time to set the alarm.)
Here is Alycia with everything working: Alycia and Clio. [Image description: Alycia smiling in front of the Clio observing station.]
Except for the clouds. Top: Incorrect. Bottom: Correct. From a couple days ago. [Image description: The telescopes on the mountain top, one picture with a cloudy evening and one clear.]
The staff keep us well stocked here. [Image description: Top: Our mugs are washed and set out nicely. They say: “Keep calm and close the loop”. Bottom: The kitchenette with shelves of water, pop, tea, cereal, and fruit.]
Wildlife in the dome. [Image description: A small lizard on the carpeted
stairs.]
Quote of the day: “I can’t believe we’re working in this.” –Laird, seeing the clouds at sunrise, while the AO loop is still locked.
Ok clouds, let’s make way (Vuli Ndlela:)
[Song/Image description: Vulindlela by Brenda Fassie, which means “Make way” and is about her son getting married, according to the internet.]
[Song/Image description: Cover of Vulindlela by Flaccida]
Vul’indlela wemamgobhozi (Open the gates, Miss Gossip) He unyana wam (My baby boy) Helele uyashada namhlanje (Is getting married today) Vul’indlela wela ma ngiyabuza (Open the gates please) Msuba nomona (Don’t be jealous) Unyana wami uthathile (My son has had a good catch) Bengingazi ngiyombon’umakoti (I never thought I’d see a daughter in law) Unyana wam eh ujongile this time (My son has been accepted (woman said yes)) Makgadi fele usenzo s’cede (Help us finish the ceremony (you are welcome)) Uzemshadweni ngiyashadisa namhlanje (Come to the wedding, I’m taking my son to the altar today) Bebesithi unyana wam lisoka (People said my son is (someone who doesn’t get women)) Bebesithi angeke ashade vul’indlela (People said he would never get married but open the gates)
Our surprise mystery guest arrived — it’s Phil Hinz, the PI of Clio, who has handed it off to us for these many years. He came down here this time, for the first time since 2012 or 2013, because we got a new computer and are running new software and we have a lot of installing and testing and debugging to do. He and Clio had a very touching reunion — and then we got to work on debugging:
Our surprise mystery visitor is Phil Hinz who came to see his long-lost instrument Clio. [Image description: A collage. Top: Phil gives Clio a warm hug (literally). The black cylinder is the dewar and it’s full of 77-Kelvin liquid nitrogen, thanks to a successful feeding day yesterday, I mean cooling day. Bottom: Phil leans over to look up some code on his laptop which is balanced on a step ladder, and my laptop is on the background on a tool chest with Paul on Skype, and the Clio electronics rack is open and on top of it is the new Clio computer, with quite the rat’s nest of cables coming out the back.]
Phil is very happy to have finally arrived — he had to stay the night in Santiago because his original flight was cancelled due to the LATAM strike, and the Sky flight Laird managed to get on yesterday was sold out when Phil tried. Laird’s new grad student Andrew Sevrinsky also arrived today on another Sky flight.
In the morning, we brought the Adaptive Secondary Mirror (ASM) from the cleanroom to the telescope. The ASM is the thing we move at a frequency of 2000 Hertz and at 585 locations on the back of the mirror, to counteract the effect of blurring from the atmosphere so that we get sharp images. We store it wrapped in plastic in the clean room so that we don’t get any dust in its 50-micron gap, and we store it on its side so that if there’s an earthquake hopefully the magnets will hold it. But for all that nice safe storage down there, then we always have to put it on the back of a truck and drive it up the hill.
Laird and the Izuzu driver make a caravan of 1, transporting the ASM from the cleanroom to the telescope. [Image description: Another collage. It’s a sequence of 4 pictures of the truck carrying the ASM up the mountain. Laird is walking alongside the truck (because we ask the driver to go about 5 mph). The sun is shining and it’s a beautiful place with the valley and the distant mountains. In the last picture the telescope domes are there.]
In the afternoon we installed the NAS (the housing that holds our wavefront sensor and our visible-light science camera “VisAO”) attached to the Nasmyth port of the Clay telescope. This was the first time we’ve installed it when there’s still another night of science to go — tonight is a MegaCam night. But our NAS doesn’t get in the way of MegaCam, and we had a full crew today, and tomorrow it will take a lot longer than normal to get our stuff installed, because it takes a long time to remove MegaCam and the f/5 and the f/11 — so it was great we managed to get the NAS installed today! Thanks to Juan, Felix, Miriel, Juanito, Victor, and the rest of the hard-working day crew!
Jared, Felix, and Juan install the NAS. [Image description: There is a large blue circle that is the side of the telescope. Attached to it is a black circle with 4 boxes standing up off it at 2:00, 5:00, 7:00, and 11:00 — those are the electronics cabinets. Jared is standing to the left side apparently tightening something or maybe checking some cables. Felix is standing on the step ladder wrangling the crane cables. Jaun is standing off to the right operating the crane. A beam of light is going across the image, from some bright spotlights that are not in the picture.]
And now Laird and Jared have gone to bed, but Phil and I are working in the Aux, with software engineer Paul Grenz on Skype, working on getting the new Clio code to work on the new computer. We’re starting the switch over to a night schedule.
I guess today is Day 1 because Laird and Phil are here. Or maybe because it was Laird’s first full day. And finally, we saw some great wildlife today!
I saw this guanaco on my way down to dinner. [Image description: A photo with a guanaco standing in profile except looking at the photographer in the center, some desert and mountains in the background, and some scrubby brush and a guard rail in the foreground. The guanaco has a long neck, stand-up ears, a short curled-over tail, and some nice fuzzy legs. It is colored a mix of browns.]
Laird saw this wild vizzy on his way down to dinner. [Image description: A vizcacha on the rocks. It looks sort of like a large rabbit, but it has a black stripe on its back, and its tail is very long and bushy like a squirrel. If you could see it hop, it is also reminiscent of a kangaroo. The rocks are big boulders, very angular, probably metamorphic.]
Song of the day:
[Song/Image description: “Shaman’s Call” by R. Carlos Nakai]
[Song/Image description: Flute cover of “Shaman’s Call”]
Well I’m here. My trip ended up being 27 hours and it was great to get here and sleep and wake up to a delicious telescope breakfast: Strong tea, dos juevos fritos, oatmeal, fresh squeezed strawberry juice, and 2 major astronomical telescopes closed up to sleep for the day. [Image description: Photo of 2 telescope domes on the top of the mountain, with a breakfast chair and some half-drinken tea and juice in the foreground]
I found this fine literature in the desk drawer in my room, left from a previous inhabitant: Literature in my room (not left by me). [Image description: The fine literature includes The Economist, Physics Today, and an ApJ paper by the author]
Today we worked hard on cooling and code. Clio code, AO code, DigiPort code. The mountain internet was down for about 4 hours. Laird arrived safely and the mystery guest got stranded in Santiago and will be here hopefully tomorrow. Code and Clio cooldown day [Image description: A collage of Jared working on AO code, Paul Skyping with Katie on Clio code, Jared and Laird by the NAS, and Katie with Clio]
I did manage to get Clio down to almost 77 K in one day! Clio drank his liquid nitrogen very well today. The blue line is the outer dewar that I started filling first, at 10am. The red line is the inner dewar, that I started filling after lunch, when the outer dewar got below 150 K. [Image description: A line plot with a red and a blue curve, showing the temperature dropping. The x axis is time in minutes and the y axis is temperature in Kelvin. Both dewars start flat at the ambient temperature, around 295 K. The curves drop exponentially, but the outer dewar drops at a faster rate than the inner dewar. There is a point of inflection in the inner dewar curve, at the point where the outer dewar got below 150 K. This is where I started filling the inner dewar too; before that it was only cooling passively. Both curves asymptote to around the temperature of liquid nitrogen, 77 K.]
And here’s the Clio cooldown plot in “XKCD” style. You don’t even have to import anything, it’s already included in matplotlib, it’s just one extra line: “plt.xkcd()”. [Image description: The same line plot as above, only I decided to put the x-axis in hours, and I used the “XKCD” style in MatPlotLib so that it looks like my plot was hand-drawn by Randall Munroe]
And we saw a herd of 5 guanacos running along the hillside as we were heading back up after lunch: Herd of guanacos [Image description: Guanacos on a hillside in Chile. They are kind of like llamas. They are pretty far away in the picture.]
Today’s song:
[Song/image description: “Come” by Jain]
[Song/image description: cover of “Come” by Esteban and Laura]
